Recall Gampopa’s fourth instruction:
As energy shifts arise, keep practice and meditation consistent until any sense of mind is gone.
In the last newsletter, I discussed how to meet unsettling energy shifts. Today the focus is on settling energy shifts, or how mahamudra unfolds. Gampopa writes:
For settling energy shifts, first the shift into mind resting arises, then the shift into presence emptying, then the shift into knowing arriving, and then the shift into clinging unwinding.
These shifts arise on their own and in their own time. As we develop the capacities and skills that enable us not to fall into reaction and not to fall into conceptual confusion, actual meditation practice consists more and more of doing nothing. Here, Gampopa describes four kinds of settling shifts that may arise when we sit and do nothing:
mind resting,
presence emptying,
knowing arriving, and
clinging unwinding.
These are not four different practices. They are four shifts that may happen when we sit and do nothing. While each shift makes the succeeding one possible, these four shifts do not necessarily arise in a predictable order. Shifts, both settling and unsettling, arise as the web of conditioned patterns unravels. How those patterns unravel is not predictable. Thus, in any meditation period, nothing may happen, one or more unsettling shifts may arise, one or other of these four settling shifts may arise, or combinations of all the above may arise. Whatever happens, practice consists of doing nothing, that is, experiencing what arises without falling into confusion or distraction or doing anything with or to what arises.
In mind resting, for instance, a resting in clarity and stability is experienced that is both deeper and vaster than the union of resting and insight that leads into mahamudra. This resting is a profound relaxation — not something we do, but something that happens. Mind is truly at rest. If thoughts arise, they arise like flashes of light or like snowflakes landing on a hot stone. They arise and subside in the same instant.
Gampopa then says:
When these shifts arise, don’t be content with your practice. Keep moving forward steadily.
Gampopa means keep doing nothing. In the case of mind resting, there will be other shifts. In each case, the point is not to work at doing something in your practice, but to become familiar with the shifts that arise. Here, practice shifts from cultivation (Tib. sgom) to becoming familiar (Tib. goms). For instance, shifts may arise in which experiences arise like apparitions in a dream, a dream in which you know you are dreaming. In other words, what you experience is empty of any presence or substantiality.
First, don’t be content with just mind resting.
Practice seeing presence emptying again and again.
Doing nothing has shifted to a deeper level.
Still, Gampopa says keep going. Keep doing nothing.
Don’t be content with just seeing presence emptying.
You need to practice coming into knowing arriving again and again.
In writing this, Gampopa may engender an impossible and counterproductive expectation in you, i.e., there is a specific experience you should have again and again. The expectation is impossible because the second time presence emptying arises, it is different from the first time. The expectation is also counterproductive because when you try to have a specific experience, you have already lapsed into controlling what arises.
All these settling shifts come from doing nothing. Don’t misinterpret Gampopa’s wording. He is saying, “Keep doing nothing,” or, to quote the actual text, “... consistently place mind without distraction and rest without affectation.” In other words, do nothing. Even when your practice is going crazy with unsettling shifts, Gampopa still says, “... without suppressing them, settle in the outlook and practice of thatness and practice from there.” Again, do nothing.
As a teacher, when students report settling shifts, you seek to find a way to keep them engaged in a practice that is obviously being fruitful without creating an expectation that re-engages a sense of “I”. Teachers do this in different ways. Kalu Rinpoche, for instance, would often say, “Not good, not bad. Keep going.” On other occasions, he would confirm the significance of the shift, and then make a joke or say something that would immediately deflate any sense of pride in the student. Sometimes he would point to an aspect of the shift that the student had not noticed, subtly rounding out the shift in a way that enabled the student to rest more deeply. Dezhung Rinpoche, another of my teachers, would usually flood a student with the warmth of encouragement. Every teacher with whom I’ve worked had his or her own distinct way of pointing the student forward yet giving the student as little as possible to hang onto.
As you become familiar with the experience of presence emptying, another shift becomes possible, a shift that Gampopa calls knowing arriving. Here you start to touch a direct non-conceptual knowing which does not stand apart from what arises. In this shift, all experience has a common flavor: it is empty of any kind of substantiation.
Again, Gampopa says to keep going:
Don’t be content with just coming into knowing arriving.
You need to practice clinging unwinding again and again.
The shift into clinging unwinding arises when the basic pattern of a world out there and an apprehending self in here frays or unravels, if only for a moment. You may sense this when mind is very clear and quiet. When mind moves, a subtle impulse to take hold of the movement arises, either as a sense of self or as a sense of other. When resting in clarity and doing nothing is deeply familiar, the impulse does not elicit a reaction. It is an arising and it subsides. The deep subtle pattern of taking hold of experience unwinds a bit and the direct non-conceptual knowing that is mind nature is able to operate more freely. Absent that clarity, however, the impulse elicits a reaction, self and other reassert themselves and samsara welcomes you once more.
Even at this point, maybe especially at this point, Gampopa’s instruction remains the same: keep doing nothing:
Don’t be content with just clinging unwinding.
You need to practice until your mind is freed in pure being,
any sense of mind is gone, and you are completely awake.
Gampopa’s description of this progression and his quiet encouragement to do nothing no matter what arises is the clearest instruction I have encountered for the practice of mahamudra. Though a trained scholar, Gampopa does not dress up his instruction with either the enumeration or description of stages. He sticks to the bare bones of instruction: what do you actually do at each point of practice? Nothing.
There are numerous pointing out instructions, many of them magnificently effective. But most texts then lapse into traditional descriptions of the four stages of mahamudra and the essential instructions are often buried in what have become descriptions of results. This is why I treasure this text. Gampopa keeps the essential practice utterly clear: learn how to rest in clear stable attention and then do nothing. Keep doing nothing as the patterns that chain you to samsara fall apart. Keep doing this until there is no longer any sense of mind separate from experience. Keep going until there is no sense of mind at all.
As Kyer-gong-pa (sKyer.sgang.pa, 1154-1217) writes in Recognizing Mind as the Guru (https://unfetteredmind.org/practice/recognizing-mind-as-the-guru/)
If contemplatives who look at mind without distraction
Are free from the mind that looks, what's the problem?
If deep meditators who continuously meditate on no separation
Release what meditates, what's the problem?
If practitioners who constantly practice with awakening energy
Understand the natural presence of no practice, what's the problem?
If truth masters who carefully guard against managing mind
Do away with mind itself, what's the problem?
One final note. As your ability to rest and do nothing evolves, keep the fundamentals active in your life. Set aside time to pay attention and reflect on the ways change and impermanence manifest in your life. Cultivate compassion on a regular basis and remind yourself that everything you understand and everything you do is to help others. No matter how deep or wonderful your understanding, pray to your teachers every day to guide you, whoever they are, wherever they are. Finally, in your life, in every thought, word, or deed, aim to move the world in which you live a small step in the direction of balance.
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